Cigar Store Trends and Tastes

It happens to the biggest premium cigar aficionadosThese dark cigars occupy one extreme of the
out there: things start to get a little stale.taste-color continuum--the informal rule by which
Not "stale" in the sense of dried-out. That can happen,light-colored, tan cigars are the driest and bitterest
of course, but it's not likely to, if your humidor is set at(features for which cigar aficionados prize them, as
the standard sixty-seven to seventy-four percentbitter hops make certain beers a once-in-a-lifetime
relative humidity range, and as long as the airexperience), while, as cigar wrappers darken, the taste
temperature inside the box is between sixty-nine andcontained inside tends to get sweeter. The oscuro is
seventy-four degrees. (It is, isn't it?) No, this kind oflike the bottom key on a piano, the lowest bass note
stale has more to do with you than it does with theon a guitar. It denotes how sweet and how dark a
cigar. You feel like your premium cigar habit is in a bitcigar can get.
of a rut, and you think it's time to try something new.But by the time of the so-called early 1990s "cigar
Luckily, cigars come in all sorts of shapes, sizes andboom," oscuros were unpopular and very hard to find.
tastes, so if you've had enough of sweetish,This probably has more to do with an overall
almost-chocolaty oscuros you can move to the othercontraction in the market than with the oscuro itself, a
end of the taste/color scale and try thekind of cigar that can be delightfully well-made as any
pale-khaki-colored, dry, delightfully astringent tastesother. With fewer people overall smoking cigars,
you'll find there. If you've gotten into the habit offlavors that had always been acquired tastes even
smoking long cigars that usually take around the sameamong cigar fans were less likely to sell, and premium
amount of time, every time, switch it up with somecigar makers stopped rolling them.
panatelas or cigarillos. If you're in bad enough rut, itBy the mid-1990s, though, you could find oscuros
might even be time to make your own premium cigaragain--just as you can today, with the premium cigar
sampler, going out of your way to pick cigars that don'tindustry continuing to function at a level far exceeding
fit your usual taste profile.that of its 1991 state.
But as above, so below: the premium cigar industryMore recently, another nearly-extinct species of cigar
itself occasionally finds itself in the same sort ofhas been recreated and is in the midst of repopulating
predicament. The standard shapes, sizes and tastescigar shops and online stores near you. The
are already hitting their popularity plateau, and no one'sSalomon--a big cigar that comes in between perfectos
sure what the next breakthrough possibility is. At theseand diademas in terms of its size--is tapered at both
times, makers of premium cigars often turn to one ofends, and has always been popular in Cuba. Its unusual
the most reliable sources of business and culturalshape means that premium cigar makers have a
innovation: the past.difficult time finding rollers with the requisite talent and
In the 1990s, when the premium cigar industryexperience to make Salomons. But that hasn't stopped
rebounded from a case of terminal stagnancy andLa Flor Dominicana and Rocky Patel from adding new
even became, for the moment, somewhat trendySalomon-sized models to their premium cigar lines--or
(while inspiring something of a late-1990s backlash asfrom making quite an impression on taste-panelists and
well), such a turn to the past for new ideas happenedCigar Aficionado (and other industry) reviewers alike.
with the chocolaty, oily oscuro cigar mentioned above.